Freedom Fest Is Coming!

San Francisco, CA - For the past four years, EFF has been thanking
its members for their support with a free outdoor concert called
Freedom Fest. This year's event will be bigger and better than
ever. EFF has partnered with Red Hat, the world's leading provider
of Linux and open source solutions, to conduct the festivities
as part of the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo in San Francisco.
Freedom Fest will be held outdoors at the gorgeous Yerba Buena
Gardens, with an all-star lineup that features celebrated local
artists Austin Willacy, Josh Fix and the Furious Force, and The
Megan Slankard Band.

Warwick Davies, Group Vice President, IDG World Expo, said, "We're
pleased to have EFF's Freedom Fest at LinuxWorld. It's a
natural partnership, and we hope everybody who attends has
a great time."

Red Hat Vice President of Corporate Communications David Burney
added, "As an open source company, Red Hat believes in providing
freedom and choice to technology users, and we are excited to
partner with EFF to bring this great event to the Bay Area."

In addition to celebrating digital rights, this year's Freedom Fest
is held in honor of the attorneys who volunteered their time to
help win the Bunner case, defending Andrew Bunner and hundreds
of other Linux users who hosted DeCSS code on their websites
in a lawsuit brought by several large entertainment companies.
The annual concert is also a chance for people interested in EFF
issues to meet the staff in a relaxed atmosphere, enjoy some free
music, and share food and drink. And for the first time ever,
the event will be simulcast live over the Web at the EFF website.

The EFF Freedom Fest will take place on Wednesday, August 4th,
from 5:00-8:00 p.m. The event is open to everyone attending
LinuxWorld and all EFF supporters - please join us!

EFF to Senate: P2P Solutions Should Pay Artists, Not Lawyers

Just before the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing last week on
the proposed Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act (S. 2560),
the president of the Recording Industry Association of America
sent a letter to all 100 senators arguing in favor of the bill and
challenging its critics to "come forth with constructive and
concrete suggestions." Today, EFF responded with our own letter
to the Senate. We argue that the Induce Act not only threatens
technological innovation, it also fails to address the real
problem with peer-to-peer file sharing: making sure that creators
are fairly compensated. Rather than pass futile legislation that
will chill American innovators while pushing P2P overseas,
Congress should be facilitating truly constructive, sensible
business solutions that work with, rather than against, new
technologies.

"In February, EFF proposed an industry-led collective licensing
solution that would ensure compensation for copyright owners
while minimizing the need for governmental intrusion into the
digital music marketplace," writes EFF Executive Director Shari
Steele in the letter. "It's time for a solution to the P2P
conflict that pays artists, not lawyers."

Debunking Audible Magic - Again

Earlier this month, EFF published an analysis of Audible Magic's
CopySense appliance concluding that it is no silver bullet for
thwarting copyright infringement via peer-to-peer networks. A
potential customer subsequently sent Audible Magic the analysis,
and the company responded with a letter defending its product.
Unfortunately, the letter entirely misses the point of our
critique, arguing that CopySense is a wise purchase for
universities and Internet Service Providers because "our product
solves today's problem."

First of all, it's debatable that CopySense solves today's problem.
As we point out in the analysis, encrypting file transfers
represents a cheap, easily implemented countermeasure that
would effectively frustrate CopySense. P2P applications exist
today that encrypt data transfers - MUTE, WASTE, and Freenet are
just a few examples.

Second, investing in a technology like CopySense is a significant
cost for most universities and ISPs, both in terms of
budgetary allocations and time and labor resources. With most
educational institutions facing strained budgets and
administrative hiring freezes, the last thing they need is to
waste time installing and learning a system that will become
obsolete soon after leaving the showroom. A product that fails
to consider tomorrow's problems fails.

It's important that people purchasing technological "solutions"
to the P2P problem are fully aware of their limitations. Follow
the link below for EFF's response to the Audible Magic letter,
which rebuts the company's claims and clarifies key points in
our original analysis.

Op-ed: E-Voting Is Not a Partisan Issue

By Cindy Cohn
EFF Legal Director

Over the past week we've seen several media stories suggesting that
the electronic voting machine issue is partisan. While there
are certainly folks who would like to portray it that way, it's
not true. Far more importantly, it's not true in terms of who
should care.

In a recent court case, EFF presented evidence of 18 serious direct
recording electronic (DRE) problems over the past two years, and
in the majority of the cases that we've seen, electronic voting
systems don't fail in any partisan way - they just fail. In
Virginia, for instance, a DRE machine switched one out of every
100 votes for the Republican candidate to a vote for the Democratic
candidate. And given the many ways that e-voting machines can be
cracked, no political party has a "lock" on programmers who
could sway an election.

It's especially puzzling to see this "partisan" spin emerge now,
in the face of a number of Republican and bipartisan efforts to
ensure the integrity of our elections:

* Senator John Ensign, a Republican from Nevada, is sponsoring
the leading Senate bill to establish a voter-verified paper
ballot (VVPB). He has been a stalwart on these issues since
long before most of us even thought about them.

* The National Federation of Republican Women supports the use
of paper trail machines.

* Congressman Rush Holt's (D-NJ) bill, HR 2239, has bipartisan
co-sponsorship, and chapters of political parties from across
the spectrum have endorsed it.

* Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute endorses
VVPB, and EFF has been working with several other conservative
groups on the issue. Just a week ago, EFF helped a bipartisan
group of voters in California's Riverside County in an ongoing
effort to recount electronic votes in a very close election.
While the race itself was nonpartisan, the candidate demanding
the recount, Linda Soubirous, is not left-wing.

When e-voting is dismissed as partisan, voters from both parties
lose. Election integrity is far too important an issue to be
sidetracked by this diversion. And when the media falls for
this sort of spin, they fall into the hands of people who want
to push the very real problems with electronic voting back under
the rug.

* EFF Awarded $131,000 for E-Voting Campaign

San Francisco, CA - EFF has been awarded three grants totaling
$131,000 for its work leading the national litigation strategy
on computerized voting. The first grant of $85,000 is from the
Washington, DC-based Arca Foundation; the second grant of $21,000
is from the Quixote Foundation of Madison, Wisconsin; and the third
grant is from the Rockefeller Family Fund based in New York City.

"The reports of problems using computerized voting machines
increase with every election," said Cindy Cohn, Legal Director
for EFF. "These machines have been hastily developed and poorly
tested. Worse, since they do not create voter-verifiable paper
ballots, there is no way to do a real recount or audit of
election results."

EFF has joined with other organizations in a nationwide campaign
to raise awareness about the ways insecure voting machines
threaten the democratic process. The organization will litigate
for e-voting reform and do outreach with traditional voting rights
organizers before and after the November presidential election.
Ultimately, the goal is to ensure accessible, secure voting on
transparent, auditable systems to ensure that votes are counted
as cast.

"We are thrilled to have the support of the Arca Foundation,
the Rockefeller Family Fund, and the Quixote Foundation in this
endeavor," said Cohn. "Their grant-making focuses on empowering
citizens to help shape public policy - this is a great
partnership."

EFF Foments Digital Television Revolution at Defcon 12

Less than a year from now, technology regulations by the Federal
Communications Commission will outlaw a set of technologies that
are revolutionizing the way people record and view digital
television broadcasts. Aimed at preventing illegal copying, the
FCC's "broadcast flag" could actually prevent a number of
activities that are perfectly legal under copyright law - such
as recording a clip of a Fox News program and redistributing it
with commentary for the purposes of criticizing the company's
reporting.

EFF is fighting back with the Digital Television Liberation Project
- an initiative to help people make their own broadcast flag-resistant
personal video recorders (PVRs) from off-the-shelf parts. EFF
has created such a PVR and will demonstrate how it's done this
Saturday, July 31st, at the Defcon 12 conference in Las Vegas,
Nevada.

"We want to keep the right to time- and space-shift that the VCR
has given us. We want to keep the fair use rights that let us
excerpt clips from press conferences or make our own 'Daily Show'
from the evening news," says EFF Staff Attorney Wendy Seltzer.
"That's why we're encouraging people to buy HDTV tuner cards now
and build multi-function receivers and recorders around them."

Thanks to a special offer from pcHDTV, you can get an unencumbered
high definition television (HDTV) tuner card at $9.89 off,
and donate $5 to EFF at the same time. The pcHDTV HD-2000 card
works with a PC running Linux to receive over-the-air broadcast
HDTV (a fast PC is recommended for playback). This tuner will
continue to work after the broadcast flag takes hold.
EFFector readers can buy the pcHDTV HD-2000 card from
http://www.pchdtv.com with the customer code "EFF-SPECIAL" for
the discount and donation.

Microsoft Wants to See Your ID
If you're sending mail to people using any of their services, that
is. Its new anti-spam tools will require senders to verify their
mail servers when trying to contact accounts maintained by
Hotmail, MSN, or Microsoft:http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/07/22/HNmicrosoftid_1.html

MediaTrips
A website that runs competitions for creative "mash-ups," and offers
a donation to EFF as the prize for the winners. Thanks, guys! http://www.mediatrips.com/

SCO Gets Whupped in DaimlerChrysler Suit
DaimlerChrysler was targeted in SCO's anti-Linux campaign, but a
judge recently agreed with the car company and threw out most
of SCO's case:http://news.com.com/2100-1016_3-5278572.html

E-Voting Victory in Ohio
The final three Ohio counties considering the purchase of e-voting
machines will stick to paper this November. Secretary of State
Kenneth Blackwell ordered the counties not to buy the machines in
light of security concerns highlighted in yet another troubling
study:http://www.eff.org/cgi/tiny?urlID=226
(AP)

The Vast Open Source Conspiracy
Electronic voting machine vendors think that their critics are
driven by a religious devotion to free software:http://www.eff.org/cgi/tiny?urlID=225
(Computerworld)

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